People who are learning to read often have difficulty pronouncing the words. Older systems for decoding words are well known in the art. The Fernald Method, discussed in Grace Fernald's Remedial Techniques in Basic School Subjects, published in 1943 by McGraw Hill, uses a whole word approach that analyzes each letter. The Gillingham Method, discussed in Remedial Teaching by Anna Gillingham and Bessie W. Stillman, published by Educators Publishing Service in 1960, uses a sound blending approach of each phonics sound. The Palto Alto Series published in 1968 by Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc. attempted to use phonogram patterns (phonograms are word parts which are comprised of the letters of the word starting from the first vowel in the word to the end of the word or from the first vowel in a syllable in the word to the end of the particular syllable in the word) in sentences (Ex.: Nan can fan a tan man.) According to John T. Guthrie, Editor of William S. Gray's Reading: Research Prospective, 1881-1941 published in 1984 by the International Reading Association, Inc., word identification measures (scores) in such phonic series (e.g., The Palo Alto series) increase, but comprehension does not increase as much, because of the meaningless content.
The present invention uses as a basis a system of phonogram classification previously patented by the inventor for one syllable words (U.S. Pat. No. 4,661,074), but extends the system through the delineation of syllabic division to all two, three, four and five syllable words in the English language.